Watching The Daily Show tonight filled me with joy. They did a report from inside of Grand Theft Auto 4 (which came out today). I have not been keeping up-to-date on the whole machinima scene but I really wished more people would try doing greenscreen within video games. A project at Georgia Tech is looking at using Second Life for augmented reality but I don’t think we have to go that far. I realize that perspective and lighting is usually a problem (and the fact you can’t manipulate anything in the virtual world) but how hard would it be to record a scene in WoW and insert real life people that look like their walking in Orgrimmar? You could even use an omni-directional treadmill painted in green for the full effect.
I think I’m just ranting because I don’t have time to work on machinima stuff.
P.S. I was just looking at some machinima on Youtube. Look people I know the medium allows for rapid development but start normalizing your audio. Whenever I start to watch a machinima that sounds like they used a cellphone on a windy day to record their audio I stop watching, I don’t care how hilarious your “let’s make fun of video games” joke is.
I’m probably late to the game when noticing these things but I can’t help but think, I like Office 2007’s UI. At least from a graphic standpoint. The use of fades and transparency just make moving my mouse around the menus a fun activity (I am amused very quickly). Everything is instantly gratifying and visual.
It’s interestingbecause I went to a talk by Jasper Juul last week and he mentioned this very same design principle.He looked at casual games and how the ones that do well tend to have a “Juiciness”factor, or excessive positive feedback. It makes sense, hardware capabilities do not limit developers any more from using a lot of animations and what we would have called “frivolous” UI details just a decade ago. I’m still waiting for my fully animated intelligent OS desktop though.
Another point about Office 2007, when I first started using it of course it was strange. More graphics, no main roll out menus, and some tools had moved. But after only a few months of using it I’ve gotten used to it. The other day I was trying to instruct someone, who was using Office 2003, where to find some ‘track changes’ feature and since in Office 2007 it’s just right in front of me when I have the review pane open I couldn’t tell them how to find the feature.
It reminds me of the studies on how users get used to an old interface and don’t want to move to a new one, or how it’s in a developers best interest to keep a ‘tried and true’ UI scheme since users have become experts with that layout. Maybe I am used to diving into new interfaces so this ‘legacy’ effect didn’t hold true for me. Or maybe Office 2007’s interface is just better even if it is only the graphics .
And now it’s April. How did that happen? I will have to remember that March is a busy time around Georgia Tech or maybe it’s just because my work has caught up with me.
Anyways one thing that I have been taking a greater interest in the past few months is keeping track of conferences, specifically for games and interactive media. It seems a lot are popping up around the globe and I’m trying to gauge how each one is valid to either submit papers or look into the proceedings afterwards.
GDC is always a good standby for the definitive game conference. I missed GDC this year, which was bitter sweet. I’ve gone the previous two years and I had a great time. Though the second time, 2007, I feel I didn’t get as much out of it as I did in 2006. Plus I also went to the Austin GDC conference in fall 2007 which made me decide not attending GDC-proper was the way to go this year. But I was able to read a lot of the articles about the talks online and converse with people that had gone, so I’m glad I didn’t shell out the money this time.
But besides GDC there are a lot of game or game-related conferences out there that I’ve included below. Some of the conference websites are from last year but most of those have the possibility to return. I also starred the ones I’m trying to get to this year.
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